Embattled Rebel
Page 12
On July 30, 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued an “Order of Retaliation” stating that for every Union captive executed, a Confederate prisoner should be treated likewise; for every captive reenslaved, a Confederate prisoner would be placed at hard labor on public works.13 This order was effective in preventing the official (but not unofficial) killing of black prisoners and their officers. But it did not completely stop reenslavement, because few Southern prisoners were remanded to hard labor in retaliation. The Confederates refused to exchange black soldiers under the exchange cartel negotiated in 1862. This refusal caused exchanges to cease, and the prisons of both sides began the descent toward overcrowding and tragic mortality that debased the last eighteen months of the war. Davis was unapologetic; sixteen years after the war’s end, in his book The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, he continued to justify Confederate policy. “We asserted the slaves to be property,” he wrote in 1881, “and that property recaptured from the enemy in war reverts to its owner, if he can be found, or it may be disposed of by its captor.”14
• • •
FOLLOWING THE DEFEAT AT GETTYSBURG AND THE LOSS OF Vicksburg, morale plunged and cries for peace arose in parts of the Confederacy, especially North Carolina. The western part of that state, like East Tennessee and the portion of Virginia that became West Virginia, had contained many Unionists in 1861. And the rest of North Carolina perhaps included more reluctant rebels than any other Confederate state. The governor, Zebulon Vance, was a loyal Confederate who was nevertheless sensitive to the peace sentiment that proliferated in the latter half of 1863. Desertion from North Carolina regiments mushroomed. William W. Holden, editor of the state’s largest newspaper, the (Raleigh) North-Carolina Standard, seized the leadership of a party that advocated peace negotiations with the United States. Holden vaguely claimed that such negotiations could achieve most of what the Confederacy was fighting for. But few except his true-believer followers shared that conviction. If the Confederate government failed to undertake negotiations, Holden declared, North Carolina should do so on its own.
In a letter to Vance on July 24, 1863, Davis condemned Holden’s “treasonable . . . cooperation with the enemy” and asked the governor if such activities “render him liable to criminal prosecution.” Vance replied with an admission that “there is a bad state of feeling here toward the Confederate Government.” But “it would be impolitic in the very highest degree to interfere” with Holden or his newspaper, for any such repression would fan the flames of discontent.15
Davis accepted Vance’s advice. But affairs in North Carolina seemed to go from bad to worse. Dozens of peace meetings took place around the state. A secret antiwar society named the Heroes of America flourished. Eight of the ten congressmen elected in 1863 from North Carolina were critics of the Davis administration; five of them were said to be in favor of peace. Vance decided that something must be done. “I will see the Conservative party blown into a thousand atoms and Holden and his understrappers in hell,” he declared, “before I will consent to a course which I think would bring dishonor and ruin upon both state and Confederacy.”16
But Vance could not act with a heavy hand, for he believed that a majority of North Carolinians supported Holden. At the end of 1863 he proposed to Davis a maneuver to outflank the editor. He urged the president to make “some effort at negotiation with the enemy” in order to allay “the sources of discontent in North Carolina.” If the Lincoln administration rejected “fair terms” (which Vance did not define), “it will tend greatly to strengthen and intensify the war feeling, and will rally all classes to a more cordial support of the government.”17
Davis missed the point of Vance’s suggestion, perhaps intentionally. He was concerned with how such a gambit would play in the Confederacy as a whole and in the United States, not just in North Carolina. He had tried negotiations before, over Fort Sumter in 1861 and with the aborted Alexander Stephens mission in 1863. Both were failures. To try again would be a confession of weakness, especially since anything resembling “fair terms” would be perceived as a Confederate retreat from its goal of independence. To send commissioners again “to propose peace, is to invite insult and contumely,” said Davis, “and to subject ourselves to indignity without the slightest chance of being listened to.” Referring to Lincoln’s “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction” published on December 8, 1863, Davis asked: “Have we not just been apprised by that despot that we can only expect his gracious pardon by emancipating all our slaves, swearing allegiance and obedience to him and his proclamations, and becoming in point of fact the slaves of our own negroes?” No peace short of military victory was possible, the president insisted. “This struggle must continue until the enemy is beaten out of his vain confidence in our subjugation.” Davis advised Vance to “abandon a policy of conciliation” toward Holden and his supporters “and set them at defiance.”18
Davis followed his own advice. He asked Congress for authority again to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Some judges—especially the chief justice of North Carolina—were issuing such writs to men who had received draft notices to enable them to avoid serving. The main purpose of suspension, however, would be to suppress the activities of “citizens of well-known disloyalty” who were seeking to “accomplish treason under the form of law” and “do not hesitate to avow their disloyalty and hostility to our cause, and their advocacy of peace on the terms of submission and the abolition of slavery.” Congress quickly granted this authority for six months.19
Vance urged Davis “to be chary of exercising the powers” granted by the legislation. “Be content to try at least for a while, the moral effect of holding this power over the heads of discontented men before shocking all worshippers of the Common law by hauling free men into sheriffless dungeons for opinions sake.” Davis considered this letter “discourteous.” But he responded with assurances that he would use his power to suspend the writ sparingly, “with a due regard to the rights of the citizen as well as to the public safety.” The president was as good as his word; few if any North Carolinians were thrown into dungeons.20
Holden suspended publication of his newspaper to avoid having the government shut it down. He also decided to run for governor against Vance. But the latter was a spellbinding orator who completely outclassed Holden on the stump. Vance managed to capture much of the peace vote on a war platform. “We all want peace,” he told voters. The question was how to achieve it. Holden’s plan for separate state negotiations would lead North Carolina back into the Union. “Instead of getting your sons back to the plow and fireside, they would be drafted . . . to fight alongside [Lincoln’s] negro troops in exterminating the white men, women, and children of the South.” The only way to obtain a real peace was “to fight it out now.” Davis could only approve of Vance’s offensive-defensive campaign. It did set Holden at defiance. In the August 1864 election, Vance swamped Holden at the polls.21
Davis also launched an offensive on another nonmilitary front far from North Carolina—in Canada. Perhaps infected by the virus of wishful thinking, many Confederate leaders were impressed by the apparent strength of the anti-Lincoln, antiwar Copperhead faction in the Northern Democratic Party. They proposed schemes to encourage this opposition by operating from across the border in Canada, hoping among other goals to defeat Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. In February the Confederate Congress in secret session appropriated $5 million for operations in Canada. Davis approved the bill and appointed several agents, who made their way (sometimes by blockade runners) to the British provinces. Davis “was not sanguine of much success” in these enterprises, according to a colleague, but was “willing however to make the experiment.”22
Davis’s skepticism was justified. Confederate agents operating from Canada subsidized Democratic newspapers and peace candidates for office in midwestern states. They plotted the seizure of a Union gunboat on Lake Erie to liberate Confederate prisoners of war at Johnson’s Island on
the lake. They also infiltrated the crowds in Chicago during the Democratic convention in late August with the hope of liberating Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas near that city. None of these schemes reached fruition. Confederate agents did manage to burn or damage a half dozen military steamboats at St. Louis, an army warehouse in Mattoon, Illinois, and several hotels in New York City. They also crossed the border from Quebec to rob the banks in St. Albans, Vermont. But none of these exploits advanced the Confederate cause. Lincoln was reelected in 1864 despite all the efforts from Canada to prevent it.23
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FOR DAVIS ALL SUCH ACTIVITIES WERE PINPRICKS AROUND the edges of Northern strength; the war could be won only by victory on the battlefield. Despite the low state of Southern spirits in the winter of 1863–64, he hoped that a counteroffensive in East Tennessee could recover the losses of 1863. As General William Hardee prepared to turn over command of the Army of Tennessee to Joseph Johnston, he reported to Richmond that the army had recovered both its morale and its physical readiness after the defeats at Chattanooga and Braxton Bragg’s resignation a month earlier.24 Almost as soon as Johnston arrived at Dalton, Georgia, to take command, he received a letter from Davis citing reports of the army’s good condition, “which induces me to hope that you will soon be able to commence active operations against the enemy.” The commander in chief reminded Johnston of “the importance of restoring the prestige of the Army” and, even more important, “the necessity for reoccupying the country, upon the supplies of which the proper subsistence of our armies materially depends.”25
Johnston professed astonishment at the portrayals of the army’s condition of readiness. To the contrary, he informed Davis, “it has not entirely recovered its confidence,” the artillery “is deficient in discipline & instruction,” the “horses are not in good condition,” it had “neither subsistence nor field transportation enough” to take the offensive, and the enemy outnumbered him almost two to one. Johnston agreed about the importance of recovering East Tennessee. But he suggested that the best way to do it was an attack on enemy communications by General Leonidas Polk (now commanding the remnant of Johnston’s previous force in Mississippi) and by cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest advancing from northern Mississippi. As for himself, “I can see no other mode of taking the offensive here, than to beat the enemy when he advances, & then move forward.” But “to make victory probable the army must be strengthened.”26
When Davis read this letter he must have experienced a sense of déjà vu. He had heard many of the same complaints six months earlier to explain why Johnston could not move against Grant at Vicksburg. And the litany of deficiencies continued to flow from Dalton to Richmond for the next five weeks. The army did not have enough food and forage for men and beasts. Artillery horses “are so feeble that in the event of a battle we could not hope to maneuver our batteries. . . . More than half of the infantry are without bayonets.” The army received only one-fourth the number of shoes each month needed to replace those that wore out. “The more I consider the subject the less it appears to me practicable to assume the offensive from this point,” wrote Johnston on February 1. To get another perspective on the army’s condition, Davis sent his aide Brig. Gen. William M. Browne to Dalton. His report painted a far more positive picture than that presented by Johnston. Browne agreed that the army was short of shoes, bayonets, and horses, but he found the men and animals in excellent shape and well supplied with food and forage.27
In the midst of this long-distance exchange about the condition of Johnston’s army, Richmond received word from General Polk that Sherman had launched a raid with twenty-five thousand men from Vicksburg toward Meridian, Mississippi. Fearing that this raid was the beginning of a campaign to capture Mobile, Davis telegraphed Johnston asking (but not ordering) him to send reinforcements to Polk. Johnston demurred, claiming that he could not weaken his own force to help Polk. Davis replied sharply that the enemy in Johnston’s front was inactive while Sherman’s advance threatened Alabama. To stop him was “not only important in itself, but greatly conducive to your future success. If deprived of the supplies in the interior of Alabama and the Tombigby valley, the most disastrous consequences must ensue.” Still Johnston hesitated, so on February 17 Davis peremptorily ordered him to send three divisions under Hardee to attack Sherman. Hardee’s men got as far as Demopolis, where they learned that Sherman had returned to Vicksburg after destroying all railroad and manufacturing facilities in Meridian. Davis ordered Hardee to return to the Army of Tennessee. He remained angry at Johnston for the week’s delay in sending reinforcements. If they had departed when Davis first urged Johnston to dispatch them, the president believed, they could have “met the enemy in advance of Meridian and Sherman’s army would have been destroyed.”28
During Hardee’s futile advance to Demopolis, an important addition to the army arrived at Dalton: Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood, who took command of a corps in the Army of Tennessee. As a brigade and division commander in the Army of Northern Virginia, Hood had been Lee’s hardest-hitting combat leader. His arm was crippled by a shell burst at Gettysburg, but he had recovered in time to come to Georgia with Longstreet in September 1863. His division spearheaded the breakthrough that won the Battle of Chickamauga, but he lost a leg in the process. Undaunted, he spent the winter in Richmond recovering from his wound and learning to ride his horse strapped in the saddle with his prosthetic leg. The thirty-two-year-old general was befriended by the fifty-five-year-old president, who became something of a father figure to Hood. Davis’s only form of exercise was riding, and on many afternoons he left the office for horseback excursions around Richmond. Hood began accompanying him on these rides, when the two would discuss military matters.
J. B. Hood
Impressed by the young general, Davis appointed him to corps command under Johnston. The president may also have invited Hood to keep him informed by writing letters without necessarily going through channels. Hood agreed to do so. After joining his corps, he also wrote directly to Secretary of War James Seddon and to Braxton Bragg, whom Davis had appointed as a sort of chief of staff in Richmond. To some commentators it has appeared that Davis commissioned Hood as a spy to send messages behind Johnston’s back. But this kind of out-of-channels communication was common in the Confederacy, without nefarious purpose. Davis’s previous experiences with Johnston’s lack of communication, and his distrust of the communications he did receive from the general, probably caused him to encourage Hood’s missives.29
Soon after arriving at Dalton, Hood wrote to Davis that he found the army in “fine condition. It is well clothed, well fed, and the transportation is excellent.” With reinforcements of ten or fifteen thousand men it could “defeat and destroy all the Federals on this side of the Ohio River. . . . I am eager . . . to take the initiative.”30 This was just what Davis wanted to hear. But where would reinforcements come from? Davis looked to Longstreet, whose troops were wintering near the Tennessee-Virginia border after failing to recapture Knoxville. The president wrote to Longstreet on March 7: “Our great effort should now be for a forward movement, as early as possible, into Middle Tennessee; and if circumstances permit it, into Kentucky.” Davis outlined a detailed operational plan for the uniting of Longstreet’s force with Johnston’s for such an offensive. But whatever route the two generals chose, it was imperative that they should take “the initiative with the greatest promptitude and energy.”31
Longstreet was agreeable. Indeed, he had proposed similar plans, including one scheme for mounting his entire command of fifteen thousand men on mules and horses for a raid deep into the enemy’s rear. Not enough animals were available, however. In March Longstreet traveled to Richmond to meet with Davis, Lee, Bragg, and Seddon. All agreed that “we should take the initiative,” Longstreet informed Johnston. But the latter believed that all of the plans for an offensive were “impracticable” because of inadequate logistics.32 Hood was es
pecially disappointed. “I have done all in my power to induce General Johnston to accept the proposition you made to move forward,” he wrote to Bragg. “He will not consent. . . . I regret this exceedingly, as my heart was fixed upon our going to the front and regaining Tennessee and Kentucky.”33
These words expressed Davis’s sentiments as well. Meanwhile, he had to endure abuse from the press and public for his selection of Bragg as, in effect, a chief of staff. The Richmond Examiner’s sarcastic comment that this “judicious and opportune appointment” was “an illustration of that strong common sense which forms the basis of the President’s character” was widely quoted. A North Carolina woman declared that “what we last week laughed at as idle & wild, a foolish rumor which no one heeded, is ‘un fait accompli.’ Gen. Bragg, Bragg the incapable, the Unfortunate, is Commander in Chief!”34 The diary-keeping Mary Chesnut thought that Bragg would function as a “lightning rod: drawing off some of the hatred of Jeff Davis to himself.” If that really was Davis’s (perhaps subconscious) intention, it did not work. In any case, the appointment of Bragg made a certain amount of sense. He relieved Davis of some of the crushing paperwork; and whatever his failings in personal relationships with others, he got on well with Davis and offered sometimes astute military counsel.35